working towards perfection (and failing)

It’s about ten past nine in the morning. I’m asleep in bed. Daylight streams through the curtains and a cat is curled up against my tummy. Somebody shakes me on the shoulder. It is Blokey. I’ve been made redundant, he calmly announces.

We’ve been here before. We will survive it again.

*sigh*

In the meantime, my summer holidays have just begun and he’s under my feet. Humpf. Best laid plans, and all that fandangly jazz.

He’s relatively nonplussed. He wasn’t keen on the work anyway and is worth far more than he was being paid. He’s spent the day updating his CV and posting it on job-sites. He’s already had a call from an agency and may get an interview at the beginning of next week. He’s also already sent his CV and a covering letter off for another position.

My routine every morning is to reach for my trusty phone and check the news before arising from my cosy bed.

News of the Kensington tower block fire caught me unawares and left me feeling profoundly sad and broken. I don’t know why it’s affected me quite so much. All day I have lived with an emptiness in my belly and a strong desire to curl up in a den of my own making. It’s almost as if the idea of people facing such tragedy, of knowing that death is imminently inevitable, that it won’t be quick and it won’t be painless, made me SO sad that the sadness became a numbness.

But at the same time I feel as if I have every {negative} emotion possible bubbling away under my skin. Anger fights frustration and irritability spars with exhaustion.

It was ridiculously insane, from the first poorly-written essay to the final exam which brought forth tears of frustration. Dialysis, full-time job, a transplant, loss of job, loss of cat, the birth of a Baby Niece, a new job … But he did it. A 2.1 BA (hons) in Business Studies from the Open University. He done good, indeedy.

I knew a bloke called Daz once. I think it was short for Darren. He had ginger hair and taught Geography at the same school as me in Essex.

This is not about *that* Daz.

So, meet Daz. Famous for doorstep challenges and random celebrities insisting that random strangers reveal their knickers to the entire nation.

As a SuperSavvyMe Savvy Member Whatsit Thingy, I was one of thousands picked to sample the delights of new Daz for Whites and Colours. I even got some samples to give away, in return for answering a few questions and filling in a few conversation reports online.

What can I say?

Well, it smells really amazing. What with it being damp and miserable outside, I’ve had to do a fair amount of drying indoors; returning from a hard day at work to a house which smells clean, fresh and just so jolly nice, is a big bonus. It also made my whites really white. I’m not just saying that so that they think I’m a nice person who never writes anything negative … No, it really does. I mostly noticed it on my mattress protector which just seemed to glow, like virgin snow sparkling under a bright winter’s sun.

I *think* I’ll continue to buy it, at least for as long as I have some money off coupons. It is a bit pricey to buy and Aldi’s own brand is so much better value for money, even if it doesn’t quite get my whites white enough.

Thank you Daz, for my shiny, lovely smelling, clothes and sheets and towels and stuff.

My Littlest Brother got himself hitched at the weekend, in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was a lovely ceremony, with joyful hymns and thousands of bridesmaids. My Monster was there and I managed to completely ignore him. I did so well at it that I was able to forget he was even there.

I felt a tad sorry for my Littlest Brother. Two of his siblings from my Monster’s side didn’t come, neither did any cousins from either side, or aunts, uncles and whatnot. Bereft of family. So it’s nice that he’s wangled himself a ready-made family as the blushing bride is the mother of three boys. One does wonder how he will cope; thirty-four years old and moving from the home he shares with his parents into an established family home, where he’ll have to think about other people, and properly pay bills and stuff. He’s not being eased into it. He’s plonking himself smack, bang into the middle and going for it full throttle.

Exciting times ahead.

I am happy for him. I hope it all works out and they do the right thing by having oodles of babies. But I’m dubious. Oh, so dubious.

It ties in with my love of graveyards and cemeteries, the knowledge that hundreds of bones lie beneath my feet in varying stages of decomposition, inevitably all – regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, faith, impairment, etc. – becoming nothing more than dust giving life to nature; the one absolute we all share, after birth, is the fact that each and every one of us will die. There is much joy and happiness to be found at funerals. A celebration of a life well-lived, the love of family and friends, the beautiful memories and the quirky anecdotes. A family united in grief, old and young, close and not-so close, sharing a moment of reflection in honour of the deceased.

My uncle passed away last month, suddenly and unexpectedly, despite his advanced years. Married to my Mumsy’s dearly departed sister and father to my cousins, he was a man I admit I was not close to, and was not particularly fond of. This stemmed, in part, from my own introversion and need for solitude, silence and routine. He was gregarious, blunt, exceedingly opinionated, and – in my childlike observations – very stern. I think that what it boiled down to was a simple personality clash and I didn’t spend enough time with him to get to know and understand him. Plus, he scared the little me completely and utterly, and I don’t think this feeling ever deserted me.

Last week we attended his funeral. It was a beautiful service. I gave hugs and comfort to my littlest nephew and held my Mumsy’s hand. And although I feel sad, I do not grieve for him. Instead I simply grieve for his children and his grandchildren, for Mumsy and for two of my siblings who were also close to him.

It made me wonder – do we really grieve for other people? Or is our grief selfish? Are we purely grieving for the things we want that we now can’t have?

2015 was the year of the Baby Niece. It was also the year of the spiralizer, but no, I don’t own one.

I flirted with the internet, using paying blogging platforms. One just upped and left with $48 of my hard-earned cash and the other is flirting back with me. I go by Poppylicious. My anonymity still means the world to me. I discovered survey sites and earnt lots of Amazon vouchers to spend on Christmas presents. I rock. Sometimes.

The Blokey turned the big Four Zero. Our kidney continues to do well.

I went to Wales. I went to Belgium. I lost weight with Dukan. I enjoyed a bit of Yorkshire hilly regions. We laughed with a real-life Bill Bailey. The boiler broke and then got fixed. The cats don’t argue quite so much anymore.

Work is slightly pants. It might get pantier, it might not.

Yes, I made that word up.

I am going to endeavour to write more here in 2016. I like writing on sites where I get paid, but I sometimes feel that I’m only writing or commenting to make money, and likewise, that people are only commenting on my posts to make a bit of extra cash. That isn’t what blogging is about to me. To me it’s simply about putting a little piece of myself out there, for the world to see. Or not. It makes me feel more valued, gives me a purpose. Besides, we’re paying for this domain; I should use it more often!

So, happy new year. I’ll be spending mine in bed, snuggled up with Blokey because he has Man-Flu. Huzzah!

She sits at the desk next to mine. I like her, but I do find her to be a trifle odd.

Having ‘escaped’ an Eastern Bloc country as a young woman, she’s since lived in many different countries. Older than me, married to an English man, she has two grow’d up children and a thousand million billion friends. She talks incessantly about her rich friends with their posh houses. They live all over the world.

Her bestest friend shares my first name. This gives her a reason to like my name, and thus like me. Apparently. I do genuinely like her, but wish she would stop complimenting me. Her personal space values need to get addressed too, but not by me. Confrontation is something I’m more than happy to shy away from.

Sometimes I listen to her and think, ‘You’re lying, duck. Why are you lying?’ but I can’t be sure that she is. Maybe she’s just one of those people who is lonely despite the extensive friend network she’s built up. Or perhaps she really does live in a complete {or semi-} fantasy world.

I’m not even sure that she did whisper, “I want you,” but another bit of my head says, “Um yes, she really, really did!” Maybe it’s just me who’s utterly delusional.